Bushfire Paper Withdrawn

Editor’s note: you can read the background to this issue in our earlier article New Tas Research Shows Logging Makes Fires More Severe.

Retraction: Winoto-Lewin, S. and Sanger, J. et al. Propensities of Old Growth, Mature and Regrowth Wet Eucalypt Forest, and Eucalyptus Nitens Plantation, to Burn during Wildfire and Suffer Fire-Induced Crown Death. Fire 2020, 3, 13

Suyanti Winoto-Lewin, Jennifer C. Sanger ^* andJames B. Kirkpatrick

Discipline of Geography and Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart 7001, Australia
^*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Fire 2020, 3(3), 47; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire3030047
Received: 27 August 2020 / Accepted: 27 August 2020 / Published: 28 August 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bushfire in Tasmania) Download PDF

The authors were informed of some errors in the categorization of forest types by a colleague. The major error was the incorrect inclusion of a category of plantation from a publicly available vegetation type layer. There were also other sites which were incorrectly categorized. The authors reclassified or removed the sites that were obviously incorrect, added new randomly located sites to compensate for excluded sites and added more site pairs. The data were then checked by an independent colleague, an expert in the forest type, who was able to check each identification. The results of analyses of the new data set were sufficiently different to those of the original paper to make it inappropriate to make minor corrections. During the reanalysis, a close examination of the data indicated that the outcomes were highly sensitive to variation in fire intensity in a low number of sites, indicating a need for a larger data set and complementary analyses using GIS techniques.
This paper [1] is, therefore, retracted and shall be marked accordingly. The Fire Editorial Office (and authors) apologize to the readers of Fire for any inconvenience caused. This paper is retracted to ensure the addition of only high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly communication.

MDPI is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and takes very seriously the responsibility to enforce strict ethical policies and standards.

Media release – Guy Barnett, Minister for Resources, 30 August 2020

Greens bushfire claims up in smoke

In an embarrassing revelation for the Greens, the UTAS study claiming sustainable forest management increased the intensity of bushfires has been shown to be fundamentally flawed and subsequently retracted.

This withdrawn paper formed the basis of the Greens‘ political attacks on Tasmania’s world-leading, sustainable forest industry.

The question is, given the Greens advocate a scientific approach to bushfire management, will they now support the Government’s scientifically backed sustainable forest management practices?

The contemporary scientific consensus indicates that native forest harvesting does not exacerbate bushfires.

In fact, responsible sustainable forestry management is an important weapon in the fight against bushfires.

Tasmania’s native eucalypt forests naturally build up large amounts of fuel, which increases the likelihood and intensity of devastating bushfires.

By actively managing our forests, through sustainable harvesting, followed by controlled low intensity post-harvest burning, we can reduce fuel loads and the risk of bushfires.

The Tasmanian Liberal Government is committed to keeping Tasmania safe from the threat of bushfires by delivering a range of initiatives, including our nation leading Fuel Reduction Program that has helped reduce the state-wide bushfire risk in Tasmania by 5.9 per cent, the lowest it has been in 15 years.

Not only does the forest industry have a critical role to play in reducing the risk of bushfires it also delivers essential support to the Tasmania Fire Service during bushfire emergencies.

Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT) is a critical part of our bushfire response capability in regional and remote areas. In the 2018/19 financial year, STT staff spent over 66,300 hours fighting bushfires to protect local communities and forest values.

During the greatest health and economic crisis in a generation, the Greens have been caught out using false information to try and put thousands of Tasmanians out of work, destroying families and rural communities.

The Tasmanian Liberal Government is committed to a responsible and sustainable forestry industry, recognising the sector injects billions into the Tasmanian economy and supports thousands of jobs, many in regional areas.

Cassy O’Connor MP | Greens Leader and Forests spokesperson, 30 August 2020

Liberals and Labor Attacking Scientists to Cover for Bushfire Logging Risk

There is apparently no low Resources Minister, Guy Barnett, and his Labor counterpart, Shane Broad, won’t stoop to to defend current logging practices.

Seizing on a decision by Tasmanian researchers, led by Dr Jen Sanger, to withdraw a paper on logging and bushfire risk over problems with data extracted from Forestry Tasmania, Barnett and Broad are trying to pretend there is no link.

There is, and as lawmakers it is reckless of Barnett and Broad to dismiss the risk

Dr Sanger and her team are undertaking research, backed up by findings nationally and globally, in the public interest.

Minister Barnett and Dr Broad are working against the public interest by attacking scientists doing this vital work in an age of climate extremes.

In January this year, Australian National University‘s world expert in forest ecology, Professor David Lindenmayer, confirmed his studies of fire behaviour in logged areas of NE Victoria.

At the time, Professor Lindenmayer said, ‘… multiple academic and forest industry studies showed forest thinning and logging in Australia ‘makes forests more fire prone.’

Dr Sanger’s fellow researcher, UTAS Distinguished Professor, Dr Jamie Kirkpatrick, said in June this year, ‘The clear and overwhelming evidence is that logging makes forests more flammable. These are the findings of four peer-reviewed, published scientific studies from four institutions in six years, and of multiple scientific reviews.’

The Greens have no doubt that if the UTAS researchers have the correct data, the findings of national and international studies on logging and bushfire risk will be replicated in Tasmania.

Forestry Tasmania needs to provide its data to the researchers. These are public forests and the data should be publicly available.

This is vital research. It should be strongly supported by Government and the Opposition, not attacked and undermined.

This is a matter of life and death.

Minister Barnett and Dr Broad shouldn’t need reminding they have a duty of care to Tasmanians who face accelerating climate extremes, and are entitled to expect their elected representatives to priortise community safety over unscientific, partisan politics.